President Donald Trump was an unabashed opponent of Section 230 liability protections for social media platforms. This protection has allowed social media to flourish as a neutral, freewheeling outlet for free expression. The threat to this freedom did not pass with Trump’s defeat. NJ Spotlight News carried an op-ed by Ian T. Shearn highlighting, and strongly supporting, proposed legislation by Tom Malinowski, my New Jersey congressman that would effectively neuter Section 230. His bill is titled the Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act.
Here are some excerpts from Shearn’s Malinowski targets Big Tech for enabling disinformation, hate groups, conspiracies:
[Malinowski] says his top priority this year is to legislatively confront those who incite and give refuge to an alarming number of radicalized white supremacy extremists and militia groups, and the proliferation of fantasies and conspiracy theories that drive them.
Specifically, he is taking direct aim at Big Tech — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al — who he says feeds the beast of disinformation and alternate facts in pursuit of colossal profits.
“Social media is designed to radicalize everyone in the United States,” he says bluntly. “Social media uses information collected on each one of us based on whatever our pre-existing political biases may be. If you’re on the left, social media knows it, and it’s going to give you more and more extreme versions of the left-wing ideas you already espouse. If you’re on the right, the same thing happens. It’ a machine designed to accentuate everybody’s likes, hates and fears.”
Now, Malinowski wants to revive a bill he proposed last year that would make social media platform owners more accountable for real harm. At the root of the problem, he argues, is the prevailing business model in which corporate algorithms drive participation and content.
His bill specifically takes aim at the much-debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to social media companies for the content posted by their users. His bill would remove those protections if the content that they promote algorithmically “leads to particularly serious harm in the real world — like acts of terrorism or violence and hate crimes.” And it would make the platforms subject to lawsuits.
[emphasis added.]
This Orwellian-like bill effectively targets any idea advocacy. Pretty much any idea can be considered by somebody to be “extreme.” Who could fight against a charge of “extremism?” Who can even objectively define it?
And then to make social media companies legally liable for “those who incite and give refuge to an alarming number of radicalized" [fill-in-the-blank with groups of your choice]? Shearn and Malinowski fill in “white supremacy extremists and militia groups.” But you can also fill in Antifa or Black Lives Matter or The Squad or, for that matter, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, with equal justification. How are Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube to know when content may lead to “particularly serious harm in the real world — like acts of terrorism or violence and hate crimes?” That would require omniscience. A liability of this kind, which could only be determined after the fact, would pretty much force these companies to disallow discussion of almost any controversial issue, which by definition implies impassioned debate. After all, what strongly held opinion can anyone unequivocally say will not lead some deranged individual to commit violence? Is it fair then for Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube to face liability for not foreseeing, after-the-fact, the violence? Indeed, how does one even define “extreme’ or “hate”? If social media algorithms direct content toward our “likes, hates and fears”--i.e., our interests--where does it draw the line between potentially violent and legitimate interests? Malinowski is essentially advocating ex post facto law, the opposite of just law and the darling of dictators who rule by fear and uncertainty. It gets worse:
In addition to his plea for Americans to come together to end this “uncivil war,” Biden also warned in his inaugural address that “we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.” And he also named names: “Political extremism, white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism,” he said, are the threats “that we must confront and we will defeat.”
And that is precisely what New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski has had on his mind for two years. In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Malinowski insisted that any national reconciliation must begin with accountability.
[My emphasis]
“Accountability” by whom and to whom? Malinowski is brutally clear:
That would allow victims to sue social media companies in such cases, as well as make them subject to federal civil rights and terrorism laws. That, in turn, would incentivize those companies to change their behavior — “something they probably won’t do unless they come under regulatory pressure,” he said.
Malinowski said he would welcome sincere, effective self-regulation, but he’s skeptical. “This has absolutely got to change,” he said in what sounded like an opening salvo in what could be a white-knuckle showdown. “And if they don’t do it voluntarily, we’re going to have to regulate them to death.”
[My emphasis]
A “white-knuckle showdown” between force-wielding politicians and legally disarmed private companies? What kind of showdown is that? It’s like a duel between two men, one armed with a gun and the other not.
How about making the government and the politicians like Malinowski liable for crimes committed while using the roads, or columnists like Shearn responsible for reader "hate" comments, rather than the actual perpetrators? That's exactly what Melanowski wants to do to social media platforms. The people who should be held responsible for "disinformation," "hate," and "conspiracies" are those who post the material. "Victims"should fight back through counterspeech, or civil libel laws directed at the content producers, not the platform providers. Punish the guilty, not the innocent. What you should not do is to punish the companies that have given the common individual the greatest freedom to express themselves ever invented. In the case of genuine objectively provable criminal incitement, it is the government’s job to protect us from such violence and terrorism. It is a gross injustice to make private companies liable for a function that is the government’s job to perform--identify, arrest, and prosecute criminals.
Of course, politicians hate the individual freedom that social media platforms give to common people because they hate accountability to the people they seek to govern. Silencing “extremist” or “radicalized” content means, in essence, silencing dissent. That is the real target of proposals like Malinowski's. "Political extremism," "white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism" are the vague catchphrases of demogogues. "Regulatory pressure" and "if they don’t do it voluntarily, we’re going to have to regulate them to death” (as if actions taken under political extortion is voluntary!!) are the actions of underworld thugs, not of "public servants." The government power to determine what constitutes disinformation, hate, conspiracies, truth, acceptable speech, and so on, and to enforce those edicts through force of law, is contrary to a free and civil society.
True, "big tech" enables disinformation, hate, and conspiracies. So what? When has society, and politics specifically, been free of those? Big Tech also enables all other kinds of unfettered expression, including the opportunity for rebuttal. As the ACLU's Nadine Strossen argues in her book "Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship", there is no way to draw the line between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" speech. If you could get every dictator and aspiring dictator past and present into a lecture hall, they'd be giving Malinowski and Shearn a standing ovation. Don't let Malinowski, Trump and their ilk seize this power of government censorship by private proxy.
Related Reading:
Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen
No, AOC, It's Not the Government's Job to 'Rein in Our Media': The First Amendment doesn't come with an exception for "disinformation," by Robby Soave for Reason
Americans Abandoning Free Speech Better Brace for the Consequences by J.D. Tuccille for Reason: Government will happily suppress misinformation in favor of misinformation of its own.
“Extremism,” or The Art of Smearing by Ayn Rand
America's Leftward Drift and the Hidden Role of Extremism
An "Extremist" GOP Is Just What We Need
E.J. Dionne Answers the Call with an Assault on "Extreme Individualism"
We Need ‘Extremism’ to Move the Political Ball in Our Direction--Capitalism
Social Media and the Future of Civil Society by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard
Why I Will Never Use the Term “Extremist” by Dr. Michael Hurd
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